Reality fatigue

People don’t want to think truth…It hurts their heads. They want to think happy thoughts. They want to enjoy modernity, which admittedly is still functioning fairly well in the Netherlands. Rumblings at the horizon are to be ignored and the same goes for messengers of bad news such as myself.

This might actually be seen as a balance between two forces: reality fatigue, or a tiredness from confronting the dark details of life, and complacency, or the refusal to act as long as life can be patched together to be pretty good.

As the old saying goes, “Good enough is the enemy of good,” and in the modern West, we suffer from this. The rest of the world is a starving war-zone and yet we live in nice suburbs. The problem of course is a question of time: being in a nice place means the wave of decay hits later rather than sooner, but it still hits, and if you actually love your children you want to avoid leaving them a future where they are doomed.

And yet, that is what generations of Westerners — frustrated by the unidirectional motion of democracy and the will of the herd to deny all real problems while chasing fake ones — have done. “Here, son, some day this will all be yours… your very own wasteland of a former first-world state, now a third-world ruin of disorder, corruption, degeneracy and filth. Thank me later; happily, I’ll be dead.”

If you wonder why legions of old people have died alone in nursing homes, there more than anything else is your answer. Their offspring realize that where it might have been easier to resist the decay before, now it is less likely, which means that it probably will not happen, which means doom for the offspring. No point visiting the aged parent to show your appreciation for that inevitability.

Our ancestors in the distant past combated reality fatigue by hiding away the ugliness of life and replacing it with grandeur and pleasure: great architecture, amazing art, lovely music and a society built around rituals that celebrate the good in life. We lost that once we started pursuing the fake issue of equality instead of the real issue of maintaining excellence, because that which does not strive for excellence succumbs to entropy.

As it stands now, however, Alf’s call should ring out with the Neoreactionaries (and Neonreactionaries, their cyperpunk offshoot) as well as alternative righters of the world: we need less focus on what is wrong, and more focus on what we want instead. We have a brief window here where we can see the problem and know that we must fix it to avoid doom. But if we focus on the negative, we will burn out and forget that this is also an opportunity to make grandeur and pleasure once again.

7 Responses to “Reality fatigue”

Talk about what we want? This is going to be a loooooooong argument. It will also be many opportunities for missing the point entirely and being intentionally obtuse as a self-defense mechanism, should we take it to the street.

Focusing on what we don’t like really does kill the juice, though. Perhaps being more honest about what we want will mean that we find more people like ourselves and we work more efficiently? When the Second Civil War comes, we will lop each others’ heads off with such fluidity that it will make the demotists very nervous.

This may be cheesy, or petty, but I think a step in the right direction would be a unified celebration of excellence, both historical and ongoing. Something like an “approved” stamp given whenever something obviously clears the bar. Going back, of course, Beethoven symphonies, the moon landing, and Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” immediately spring to mind. Some on-going pop culture can also qualify. I’m not sure what would be the best way to recognize and celebrate these things, but the funny thing is, you never see the media, or really anyone, ever say “X sets the high water mark for humanity” or “Y forever changed the way I view the world.” Hipsters get all excited about trendy music and restaurants (“omg i waited for 2 hours to get inside, the new acai wasabi llama milk ice cream is to die for!”), but these don’t have lasting power, plus they don’t ever make a coherent argument as to why they are excellent.

I’m going to stop because this is morphing into a negative post. It’s difficult after all! =)

Honored by the mention. This part rings especially true and is a source of great frustration:

“Here, son, some day this will all be yours… your very own wasteland of a former first-world state, now a third-world ruin of disorder, corruption, degeneracy and filth. Thank me later; happily, I’ll be dead.”